"A Serious Man"Directed by: Ethan and Joel Coen
Starring: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick
Rated: R
Since their debut effort, "Blood Simple," Joel and Ethan Coen have made some of the best, most idiosyncratic and enigmatic films of the last quarter century.
Their best work - such as "Fargo," "Miller's Crossing," and "The Big Lebowski" - is films that encourage and reward repeated viewings. Even their least acclaimed movies - "The Hudsucker Proxy," "The Man Who Wasn't There" - bear the stamp of great film making. And their most commercially successful piece, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" (not a favorite of mine), brought bluegrass music to new generations of listeners and gave George Clooney his comic actor cred.
Aside from their indelible personal stamp on everything they have written, directed and produced, one could never accuse the brothers of making the same film twice.
Their new movie, "A Serious Man," has everything Coen fans want from the Coens: weirdness, weird humor, weird seriousness, serious weirdness and weird comedy. Even their "weirdness" is weird.
I couldn't figure out the intricate morbid details the brothers were plunging into my eyes upon the initial viewing. I watched it alone and afterwards really wished someone had shared the experience with me and might want to go have a drink and tell me what the heck it might be all about.
But it finally sunk in.
It's the Coens doing their take of the Book of Job.
Larry Gropnick (Michael Stuhlbarg) faces every minute problem that could be bestowed on a 20th century fella - the film is set in 1967 - who is simply doing his best to get by.
His son is a habitual pot smoker who wants Larry to re-adjust the TV antennae so he can watch "F Troop." His daughter steals money from him to save up for a nose job. A student - Larry is a college physics professor - is trying to bribe him. Larry's wife is having an affair and no rabbi he can manage to see for counseling makes the slightest bit of sense.
If that premise sounds bleak, you don't know the Coens. Which isn't to say it's a rosy picture, either. It's another glimpse into the universe governed by two gifted story tellers.
Does Larry learn a lesson? Who knows? Ask yourself if you learned one after seeing "A Serious Man."
I did, but I still don't know what it was.
"Pirate Radio"Directed by: Richard Curtis
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Sturridge, Rhys Darby, Talulah Riley, January Jones, Katherine Parkinson, Emma Thompson
Rated: R
As much as I couldn't figure out about "A Serious Man," I knew and loved about "Pirate Radio" just by seeing the previews.
Any baby boomer rock 'n' roll fanatic knows about the pirate radio stations that scorched the airwaves of Great Britain during what was known as "The British Invasion," but we also know that this film, at best, is fiction imbibed with a kernel of fact.
In the mid 1960s, when British bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds and The Who were changing rock 'n' roll worldwide and American artists, some who had been around for many years, were getting their due in the U.K., the airwaves of the BBC were controlled strictly by the British government.
Midway into the decade, on a boat anchored in international waters, a radio station known as Radio Caroline began broadcasting into the British Isles.
The BBC was playing classical music, some jazz, mostly talk and news programs; Radio Caroline blew the proverbial roof off the sucker.
They played the new Brit sound as well as the American music that had influenced it. And they played folk and jazz and anything cool, and it was fairly obvious the folks involved loved what they were doing and maybe also loved what other music lovers loved. If you weren't around then, that's a veiled reference to "sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll" ... and freedom.
I can't say that "Pirate Radio" is a "good" film. Its flaws are many and obvious. But I can say it made my heart race and let me remember how much rock 'n' roll meant to me back then, and still does today.
I was beating air drums throughout the showing and thought about the days when radio played Dusty Springfield back-to-back with Jimi Hendrix.
And it all made sense.
If that makes sense to you, you'll appreciate "Pirate Radio."
Jim Wunderle owns Wunderle Sound Services and is a Springfield freelance writer and musician. He can be reached at info@wunderlesound.com.
